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<title>The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary: H</title>
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<h1>H</h1>


<p class="entry"><span class="def">habeas corpus.</span> A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">habit</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A shackle for the free.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hades</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The lower world;
the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.</p>

<p>Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most
respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed,
the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been
removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process
of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a
majority vote on translating the Greek word “Aides” as “Hell”; but a
conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and
struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting,
the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and
said with considerable excitement: “Gentlemen, somebody has been razing ‘Hell’
here!” Years afterward the good prelate’s death was made sweet by the
reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an
important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English
tongue.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hag</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old
witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads
were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus—hag being the popular
name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one
time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a “beautiful hag, all
smiles,” much as Shakespeare said, “sweet wench.” It would not now be proper to
call your sweetheart a hag—that compliment is reserved for the use of her
grandchildren.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">half</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or considered as divided. In
the fourteenth century a heated discussion arose among theologists and
philosophers as to whether Omniscience could part an object into three halves;
and the pious Father Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that
God would demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and
unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the body of
that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the negative. Procinus,
however, was spared to die of the bite of a viper.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">halo</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently
confounded with “aureola,” or “nimbus,” a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a
head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion,
produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is
conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop’s mitre,
or the Pope’s tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist
of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass
nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting
honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly
grace.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hand</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into
somebody’s pocket.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">handkerchief</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face
and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The
handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and
intrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakespeare’s introducing it into the play
of “Othello” is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr.
Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails in our own
day—an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hangman</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost
gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal
ancestry. In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an
electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently
been ordered—the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody
questioning the expediency of hanging Jerseymen.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">happiness</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">harangue</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harrangue- outang.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">harbor</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">harmonists</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the
last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hash,</span> <span class="pos">x.</span> There is no definition for this word—nobody knows what hash is.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hatchet</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,</p>
<p class="poetry">For peace is a blessing,” the White Man said.</p>
<p class="poetry">The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred, With imposing rites, in the White Man’s head.</p>
<p class="poetry">John Lukkus</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hatred</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another’s superiority.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">head-money</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A capitation tax, or poll-tax.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">In ancient times there lived a king</p>
<p class="poetry">Whose tax-collectors could not wring</p>
<p class="poetry">From all his subjects gold enough</p>
<p class="poetry">To make the royal way less rough.</p>
<p class="poetry">For pleasure’s highway, like the dames</p>
<p class="poetry">Whose premises adjoin it, claims</p>
<p class="poetry">Perpetual repairing. So</p>
<p class="poetry">The tax-collectors in a row</p>
<p class="poetry">Appeared before the throne to pray</p>
<p class="poetry">Their master to devise some way</p>
<p class="poetry">To swell the revenue. “So great,”</p>
<p class="poetry">Said they, “are the demands of state</p>
<p class="poetry">A tithe of all that we collect</p>
<p class="poetry">Will scarcely meet them. Pray reflect:</p>
<p class="poetry">How, if one-tenth we must resign,</p>
<p class="poetry">Can we exist on t’other nine?”</p>
<p class="poetry">The monarch asked them in reply:</p>
<p class="poetry">“Has it occurred to you to try</p>
<p class="poetry">The advantage of economy?”</p>
<p class="poetry">“It has,” the spokesman said: “we sold</p>
<p class="poetry">All of our gray garrotes of gold;</p>
<p class="poetry">With plated-ware we now compress</p>
<p class="poetry">The necks of those whom we assess.</p>
<p class="poetry">Plain iron forceps we employ</p>
<p class="poetry">To mitigate the miser’s joy</p>
<p class="poetry">Who hoards, with greed that never tires,</p>
<p class="poetry">That which your Majesty requires.”</p>
<p class="poetry">Deep lines of thought were seen to plow</p>
<p class="poetry">Their way across the royal brow.</p>
<p class="poetry">“Your state is desperate, no question;</p>
<p class="poetry">Pray favor me with a suggestion.”</p>
<p class="poetry">“O King of Men,” the spokesman said,</p>
<p class="poetry">“If you’ll impose upon each head</p>
<p class="poetry">A tax, the augmented revenue</p>
<p class="poetry">We’ll cheerfully divide with you.”</p>
<p class="poetry">As flashes of the sun illume</p>
<p class="poetry">The parted storm-cloud’s sullen gloom,</p>
<p class="poetry">The king smiled grimly. “I decree</p>
<p class="poetry">That it be so—and, not to be</p>
<p class="poetry">In generosity outdone,</p>
<p class="poetry">Declare you, each and every one,</p>
<p class="poetry">Exempted from the operation</p>
<p class="poetry">Of this new law of capitation.</p>
<p class="poetry">But lest the people censure me</p>
<p class="poetry">Because they’re bound and you are free,</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Twere well some clever scheme were laid</p>
<p class="poetry">By you this poll-tax to evade.</p>
<p class="poetry">I’ll leave you now while you confer</p>
<p class="poetry">With my most trusted minister.”</p>
<p class="poetry">The monarch from the throne-room walked</p>
<p class="poetry">And straightway in among them stalked</p>
<p class="poetry">A silent man, with brow concealed,</p>
<p class="poetry">Bare-armed—his gleaming axe revealed!</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hearse</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Death’s baby-carriage.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">heart</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be
the esat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is
nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the
sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by
chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak
becomes a feeling—tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which
it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar
sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram;
the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious
contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility—these things have been
patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing
lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, <i>The Essential Identity of the Spiritual
Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion</i>&#8212;4to, 687 pp.) In
a scientific work entitled, I believe, <i>Delectatio
Demonorum</i> (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the
sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult
Professor Dam’s famous treatise on <i>Love as a
Product of Alimentary Maceration</i>.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">heat</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode</p>
<p class="poetry">Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving</p>
<p class="poetry">His point; but this I know—hot words bestowed</p>
<p class="poetry">With skill will set the human fist a-moving, And where it stops the stars burn free and wild. <i>Crede expertum</i>&#8212;I have seen them, child.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Gorton Swope</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">heathen</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and
feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University,
Hebrews are heathens.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“The Hebrews are heathens!” says Howison. He’s</p>
<p class="poetry">A Christian philosopher. I’m</p>
<p class="poetry">A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,</p>
<p class="poetry">Addicted too much to the crime</p>
<p class="poetry">Of religious discussion in my rhyme.</p>
<p class="poetry">Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree</p>
<p class="poetry">On a <i>modus vivendi</i>&#8212;not they!&#8212;</p>
<p class="poetry">Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,</p>
<p class="poetry">And I haven’t been reared in a way</p>
<p class="poetry">To joy in the thick of the fray.</p>
<p class="poetry">For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,</p>
<p class="poetry">And the truth of it I aver:</p>
<p class="poetry">Who differs from me in his faith is an ‘ist,</p>
<p class="poetry">And ‘ite, an ‘ie, or an ‘er—</p>
<p class="poetry">And I’m down upon him or her!</p>
<p class="poetry">Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin</p>
<p class="poetry">Toleration—that’s all very well,</p>
<p class="poetry">But a roast is “nuts” to his nostril thin,</p>
<p class="poetry">And he’s running—I know by the smell—</p>
<p class="poetry">A secret and personal Hell!</p>
<p class="citeauth">Bissell Gip</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">heaven</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs,
and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hebrew</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">helpmate</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A wife, or bitter half.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?”</p>
<p class="poetry">Says the priest. “Since the time ‘o yer wooin’ She’s niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at—</p>
<p class="poetry">For it’s naught ye are ever doin’.”</p>
<p class="poetry">“That’s true of yer Riverence [sic],” Patrick replies,</p>
<p class="poetry">And no sign of contrition envices;</p>
<p class="poetry">“But, bedad, it’s a fact which the word implies,</p>
<p class="poetry">For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!”</p>
<p class="citeauth">Marley Wottel</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hemp</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put
on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hermit</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hers,</span> <span class="pos">pron.</span> His.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hibernate</span>, <span class="pos">v.i.</span> To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular
popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the
bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking
its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so
lean that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow. Three or four centuries
ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that swallows passed the
winter months in the mud at the bottom of their brooks, clinging together in
globular masses. They have apparently been compelled to give up the custom and
account of the foulness of the brooks. Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia
a whole nation of people who hibernate. By some investigators, the fasting of
Lent is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to
which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was strenuously
opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not wish any honors
denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hippogriff</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was
itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was
actually, therefore, a one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents
in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">historian</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A broad-gauge gossip.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">history</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by
rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Of Roman history, great Niebuhr’s shown</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Tis nine-tenths lying.<br />
Faith, I wish ‘twere known, Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,<br />
Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Salder Bupp</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hog</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and serving to illustrate that
of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews, the hog is not in favor as an article
of diet, but is respected for the delicacy and the melody of its voice. It is
chiefly as a songster that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus
has been known to draw tears from two persons at once. The scientific name of
this dicky-bird is <i>Porcus Rockefelleri</i>.
Mr. Rockefeller did not discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of
resemblance.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">homoeopathist</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The humorist of the medical profession.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">homoeopathy</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last
both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure
imaginary diseases, and they can not.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">homicide</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious,
excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to
the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another—the classification is
for advantage of the lawyers.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">homiletics</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions
of the congregation.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">So skilled the parson was in homiletics</p>
<p class="poetry">That all his normal purges and emetics</p>
<p class="poetry">To medicine the spirit were compounded</p>
<p class="poetry">With a most just discrimination founded</p>
<p class="poetry">Upon a rigorous examination</p>
<p class="poetry">Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.</p>
<p class="poetry">Then, having diagnosed each one’s condition,</p>
<p class="poetry">His scriptural specifics this physician</p>
<p class="poetry">Administered—his pills so efficacious</p>
<p class="poetry">And pukes of disposition so vivacious</p>
<p class="poetry">That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam<br />
Were convalescent ere they knew they had ‘em.<br />
But Slander’s tongue—itself all coated—uttered<br />
Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered<br />
That in the case of patients having money<br />
The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.</p>
<p class="citeauth"><i>Biography of Bishop Potter</i></p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">honorable</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Afflicted with an impediment in one’s reach. In legislative bodies it is customary to
mention all members as honorable; as, “the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.”</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hope</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Desire and expectation rolled into one.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Delicious Hope! when naught to man it left—</p>
<p class="poetry">Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;</p>
<p class="poetry">When even his dog deserts him, and his goat
With tranquil disaffection chews his coat
While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,
The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,
Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint
The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.</p>
<p class="citeauth"><span class="def">Fogarty Weffing</span></p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hospitality</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need
of food and lodging.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hostility</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth’s overpopulation. Hostility
is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman
for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">Houri</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good
Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his
earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul. By that good lady the Houris are said to
be held in deficient esteem.</p>

<p id="house" class="entry"><span class="def">house</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beelte, cockroach, fly,
mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe. <i>House
of Correction</i>, a place of reward for political and personal service,
and for the detention of offenders and appropriations. <i>House of God</i>, a building with a steeple
and a mortgage on it. <i>House-dog</i>,
a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult persons passing by and
appal the hardy visitor. <i>House-maid</i>,
a youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously disagreeable
and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has pleased God to place her.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">houseless</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Having paid all taxes on household goods.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hovel</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The fruit of a flower called the Palace.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Twaddle had a hovel,</p>
<p class="poetry">Twiddle had a palace;</p>
<p class="poetry">Twaddle said: “I’ll grovel</p>
<p class="poetry">Or he’ll think I bear him malice”—</p>
<p class="poetry">A sentiment as novel</p>
<p class="poetry">As a castor on a chalice.</p>
<p class="poetry">Down upon the middle</p>
<p class="poetry">Of his legs fell Twaddle</p>
<p class="poetry">And astonished Mr. Twiddle,</p>
<p class="poetry">Who began to lift his noddle.</p>
<p class="poetry">Feed upon the fiddle&#8212;</p>
<p class="poetry">Faddle flummery, unswaddle</p>
<p class="poetry">A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">humanity</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">humorist</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh’s heart and
persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind</p>
<p class="poetry">See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined—</p>
<p class="poetry">Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray, His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day.</p>
<p class="poetry">He thinks, admitted to an equal sty,</p>
<p class="poetry">A graceful hog would bear his company.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Alexander Poke</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hurricane</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the
tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies
and is preferred by certain old-fashioned sea-captains. It is also used in the
construction of the upper decks of steamboats, but generally speaking, the
hurricane’s usefulness has outlasted it.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hurry</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The dispatch of bunglers.</p>

<p id="husband" class="entry"><span class="def">husband</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hybrid</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A pooled issue.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hydra</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hyena</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at
night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hypochondriasis</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Depression of one’s own spirits.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot<br />
Where long the village rubbish had been shot<br />
Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps—<br />
“Hypochondriasis.” It meant The Dumps.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Bogul S. Purvy</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">hypocrite</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One who, profession virtues that he does not respect secures the advantage of
seeming to be what he depises.</p>


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